


a bird of a different breed

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Christmas Eve, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:37:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “What are you doing for Christmas Eve,” Sarah says, falling into step alongside Rachel like it’s autumn, still, and Rachel is the sort of person who would jump out a window if Sarah just saidgo.It’s not that she misses being that person. That would be—Irresponsible.(A follow-up toMonkey Tree.)





	a bird of a different breed

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Monkey Tree](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7088509) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09). 



> This almost certainly will not make sense if you have not read Monkey Tree!
> 
> Anyways: Merry Christmas. Good to be back here with these kids who I desperately love.

It’s difficult to avoid Sarah on the way out from gym class, if Sarah is working for it. Today she is working for it; she catches Rachel as Rachel is tangling a hand in her hair, and Rachel has to lower it hastily before Sarah can look and realize that a few strands of Rachel’s hair are out of place.

“What are you doing for Christmas Eve,” Sarah says, falling into step alongside Rachel like it’s autumn, still, and Rachel is the sort of person who would jump out a window if Sarah just said _go_.

(It’s not that she misses being that person. That would be—

Irresponsible.)

“Spending it with family,” Rachel says. Politely, tonelessly: “You?”

“S says you should come,” Sarah says, trampling over the question with the subtlety of an elephant. “Just gonna be the three of us. And you. If you want. She’s pissed that she hasn’t seen you for a month, you wouldn’t believe how much tea she’s making.”

“I can’t.”

Rachel doesn’t have to look to the side; she can imagine the look that Sarah is giving her, too knowing by far. Rachel turns and meets Sarah’s eyes anyways. She can practically see subtitles, like Sarah is a language Rachel doesn’t understand anymore.

[YOUR PARENTS?]

[YOU KNOW YOU’RE TOO GOOD FOR THEM.]

[I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WON’T SKIP THEIR PARTY.]

[I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WON’T LET YOURSELF BE HAPPY.]

Rachel tries to shape her gaze into something that says _I am happy, stop trying to convince me that I’m not._ She doubts that it works. “I am sorry,” she says, “that I can’t make it.” _Don’t tell Siobhan that_ , but Rachel can’t say it.

“Liar,” Sarah says, and the word is gone before Rachel can pick it apart for venom.

“Yes,” she says. “Frequently.” She stops in the hallway, weathers the irked muttering of other people who have to cut around her. “The Debate team is meeting. I’ll be seeing you.” And then she turns and leaves, like a coward.

She hears Sarah mutter something under her breath, but Rachel is gone, and it doesn’t matter to her – really, it doesn’t matter.

God, she is an idiot.

She hates Debate. She doesn’t care about anything, that’s always been the problem of her. Cosima Niehaus has passions – if a deep-seated love for endless tangents – and Alison Hendrix has the world’s loudest and shrillest voice, but Rachel has nothing. She doesn’t have anything anymore.

When other people are talking she looks outside and watches the snow erase the features of the city. It’s been bitterly cold, this winter. It started maybe a week or two after Rachel walked out of Helena’s bedroom and went home and threw a glass against a wall and decided, viciously, that she wasn’t going to be that person anymore.

But that’s not the point. The point is the snow. She’s lucky the car is heated; if she had to walk through this, she’d be miserable. It’s a good thing she isn’t going to Helena’s house anymore. It would be frigid. She would be miserable. Her college applications would be empty – she would have nothing to show for her life but slush melting in her boots. Outside the snow falls but it doesn’t touch her. No one really touches her, now.

The bell rings; the Debate team packs up. Not one person looks at her – they all chatter amongst themselves, sling backpacks over their shoulders and leave. Maybe the way Rachel wins arguments is too ruthless. Maybe Rachel is too ruthless. But she tried being something else – she did – it didn’t work. So it has to be this. This will propel her out of this school, this town, the person she is in this school and this town. If her grades are high enough. If she spends enough time at extracurriculars and clubs and office hours instead of her awful, empty house. If she does everything right, she will finally stop being this.

The chair next to Rachel is also empty, when she gets to math class. Helena is still with her friends. When lunch ends she will sit down next to Rachel, because for some reason Helena is persisting with the idea that nothing has changed. Things did change. Rachel walked into Helena’s bedroom and Helena said _don’t go, please,_ and then Rachel did – she left – she walked outside and into that vicious hot autumn and the door closed behind her and she left Helena and herself on the other side.

She had sat on the floor of her kitchen for a long time. After she broke the glass. It was hot; the sun had trickled down the back of her neck like melted butter. _Rachel?_ Helena had said. _Stay._ But she hadn’t.

Next to Rachel Helena drops like a rock into her chair, slaps her notebook on the table. “Did Sarah tell you,” she says, without looking up. “About holidays.”

“I can’t make it,” Rachel says. She slants her eyes sideways to watch Helena. Nothing. Still nothing. The first day – afterwards – she had expected Helena to punch her in the face, but she hadn’t. She still sits next to Rachel in classes, still works with Rachel on group projects when they’re lumped together. There just isn’t anything else. She doesn’t sprawl all over Rachel’s space, smelling awful, too loud and too feral to be borne. She won’t let Rachel ask herself the question of whether or not she can bear her. She’s just – there. But not there. She isn’t there.

“You can’t come,” Helena says.

“No.”

“Family,” Helena says. She is flipping through her notebook, finding a filled-in packet that she puts at the corner of her desk.

“Exactly,” Rachel says, “you understand. It’s important that I be there.”

“Important to who,” Helena says.

For a moment they are looking at each other – really looking at each other – and then Ms. Chen starts class and their gazes drop like lead weights down to their respective notebooks. The mathematics lecture is, as always, white noise; it fills up Rachel’s ears but means nothing.

Rachel watches Helena out of the corner of her eye. Helena: bent over her notebook, furrow between her eyebrows, taking notes in her sprawling mess of a hand. The numbers crawl all over the page. Rachel would say they’re arachnid in shape, but that would be too easy.

She looks back down at her own notes – the frustrating lack of comprehension, the way this used to be so easy and now it isn’t. All of this used to be so easy and now it isn’t. She made the right choice, though. It was a question of being Helena’s or being what she needs to be to succeed; being Helena’s was unsustainable. It was a hard choice but it was the right one.

After class she watches Helena careen into Sarah and bump their heads together with violent tenderness. The two of them walk towards history class, one living animal. Rachel has the same class as them, but it’s fine. She’ll sit by the window and watch the snow.

* * *

The problem is that once they reach Christmas break, everything stops. The school closes its doors. The homework evaporates. There is nothing but Rachel and that damnably empty house and books of SAT prep that she works through like she’s starving for them. Her scores are still in the low range – 2100, 2150, 2170, inexcusable – and so she throws herself at the distraction. _This argument is weakened by – however, the complete absence of – the author begs the question—_

Outside, the sky gets dark. Inside, the house gets dark. Rachel goes downstairs and makes dinner, goes back upstairs to her room. The rooms echo with something that isn’t loneliness; Rachel’s walls are cold and white. She still hasn’t unpacked her boxes yet. Any day now, she tells herself. Any day.

By the fourth day she is out of things to write. By the fifth she has done all the practice questions. By the end of the first week there is nothing but _Rachel_ to occupy Rachel, and that is the worst possible scenario. She sits in the room and watches light paint over the walls; as it creeps across the room she considers the idea of regret. Like: this feels like nothing. Like: have I made a mistake.

It’s been too long since Sarah told Rachel to leave her family and go back to that house; it’s too long for Rachel to keep thinking about it. Picking apart the words. Wondering where the twins are now – what they’re doing – if they regret offering, or if they regret not pushing the offer harder. She rewinds and replays the conversation and imagines being Sarah’s, again, and saying _yes_. Saying immediately _of course, yes, why would I go anywhere else_.

One night Rachel sits between the railings of the staircase like a child and watches her parents come home. They don’t look up the stairs. They are talking about work, still, a frenzy of ideas – when Rachel slits her eyes, they buzz about her parents’ heads like fireflies in the dark. _How was your day_ , she mouths, and then they’re gone and they don’t answer her.

Her recycling bin is full of crumpled paper, aborted confessions. _My argument is weakened by my – complete absence of feeling – I’m begging—_ She’d thrown them all out but it doesn’t stop her from hating herself. Nine days into break she caves in and texts Helena.

Her parents leave for work before dawn; Rachel listens to them leave and looks at her phone screen in the dark, turns Sarah and Helena’s words over in her brain. _You should come._ Sarah in the hallway, hands in her pockets. Helena all capital letters on the screen of Rachel’s phone. Does that mean they’d wanted her. Had they really wanted her. Do they really want her, and why, and how could they, after what she did. After what she chose. After who she decided to be, do they want her, could they want her, is she still the sort of person other people could want.

They meet her in the middle of a dizzy empty block of enormous empty houses. Sarah is wearing a black coat that looks like a warmer version of her leather jacket; Helena is wearing her feral unwashed parka and – incongruously – a toque. It has a little pom-pom on it.

“Hey,” Sarah says. “You found a jacket.”

It’s a stupid thing to say. It’s gotten cold; of course Rachel has been wearing a coat. But the last time the three of them were on this block, or a block like this block, Rachel was shivering and Sarah offered her jacket. And Rachel said no. And Sarah should have known, then, that Rachel was a waste of effort.

“I stole it,” Rachel says. The words are small and muffled in the snow-silence. She didn’t steal it. She needs them to remember. She can’t let them remember.

“Oh no,” Helena says. “Now I must steal jacket also.”

Sarah snorts. “You ever steal somethin’ that isn’t food, meathead?”

Rachel turns her head to watch the trail of the twins’ footsteps vanish behind them in the snow, says nothing. Her hands, in her pockets, dig their nails into their own palms like they can carve the skin open and something better can crawl out of the empty cocoon.

“Once I stole a purse,” Helena says. “It had gums inside of it. I ate all the gums and then my mouth was too sharp to breathe into and then I was sick on the street. Not good.” She tilts her head back and holds out her tongue in patient expectation of snow. Rachel and Sarah meet each other’s eyes while Helena’s head is tilted.

[FIX IT.]

[YOU FIX IT. THIS ISN’T MY JOB ANYMORE.]

[IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED.]

[I AM SO TERRIBLE AT STAYING.]

Sarah shoves a breath out through her nose and starts walking; Rachel doesn’t recognize the direction, follows anyways. Her spine itches with the familiar terror of something she is missing, something she should be doing. Next to her Helena falls into step. _What was it_ , Rachel wants to say, _what am I missing_ , but Helena wouldn’t know.

“Where are you going,” she says instead.

“We,” Sarah says. “Where are _we_ going.”

“Sarah doesn’t know,” Helena says.

“You texted.”

“I did,” Rachel says. “I don’t have any ideas. You know I’ve only walked through this neighborhood one time?”

“It was warmer then,” Helena says. “Cold now. All this snow. Are you coming? To Christmas night.”

Unfair. Unfair of her to launch it now, like the snowballs Rachel spent her entire childhood fearing. The worst part is that she never got hit with one. She just spent her whole life waiting for someone else to hate her enough to throw.

“I said I couldn’t,” she says.

“Must be a hell of a party,” Sarah says.

“It will be.” Rachel nudges snow off the sidewalk with the edge of her boot and it crumbles and it’s noiseless. She realizes with a jolt that they might be waiting for her to invite them. God. No. She had hoped Helena would have learned that – she thought they – they can’t be, they aren’t. She’s driving herself in tight spirals with her own paranoia, that’s all.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and stops, and adds: “that I can’t come.”

“You said,” Helena says. She wanders out into the street, scuffing her feet so she leaves one long enormous trail behind her. “Everybody knows,” she calls back without turning around, “that you are sorry. Rachel. I know. Sarah knows.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. Rachel is refusing to look at her, again. More snow off the edge of the curb. More snow falling in to fill the space. She hates herself.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she says, and skids to a halt, and turns around.

“No cars in the driveway,” Sarah says – instead of anything sensible, like _you’re right and you should never come back._

Rachel turns back around. Sarah is staring at the house they’ve just walked past; her face is tight, contemplative. Helena has stopped in the middle of the street and: laughed. She’s laughing. It’s not a kind sound.

“Sarah,” Helena says. “Sarah no.”

Sarah takes a step towards the house. “Don’t see a dog door.”

“ _Sarah_.”

“Come on,” Sarah says, “there’s no one around,” and she lopes over to a gate – opens the latch – lets herself into the house’s backyard. Rachel’s spine goes stiff and frosted and she watches Helena. Helena watches her back.

 _It was warmer then_ , Helena had said. Her eyes are cold. Rachel’s spine is cold. The snow is erasing Sarah’s footsteps, wiping her out. In autumn it had been so hot and they’d moved like a three-headed thing – at least in Rachel’s memory they did. At least in Rachel’s memory she had wanted them to.

Helena follows her sister through the open gate. Rachel follows Helena, watches the ridiculous bobble on her hat get buried in snow. In the backyard Sarah is hunched over the lock of a glass sliding door; the entire wall is made of glass, and inside Rachel can see furniture and rugs. Helena is breathing through her mouth behind her. Rachel wasn’t going to be this person anymore.

The lock clicks.

Sarah opens the door with a mocking bow in Rachel’s direction; Rachel turns around to see if Helena is going, but she isn’t. Anger is the warmest thing in the world, right now, heating up the pit of Rachel’s throat and nothing else. She raises her chin. She steps through the door. She winces – then – no alarms, nothing. The house is day-dreaming silent, muffled with thick rugs.

The door closes behind the three of them with a click. “You ever stolen something?” Sarah says. “Rachel.”

Rachel shakes her head. The heels of her boots are very loud on the floor before she steps onto the carpet and they’re muffled again. “Are you going to tell me,” she says.

“Tell you what.”

“Whatever it is you stole.”

“I steal shit all the time,” Sarah says. And then, to herself: “all the bloody time.”

“Sarah is clapping maniac,” Helena says. Rachel turns around and meets her eyes and sees the beat where she is supposed to say, chiding and fond, _kleptomaniac_. The beat passes. She turns into the house and walks through it. The taste in art isn’t bad, all things considered.

Made brave by distance, she says: “I don’t know why you thought—”

The bravery stops. She falls silent again.

“’cause you’re our friend,” Sarah says, voice small and echoing through someone else’s house. Rachel turns around and sees Sarah standing between Helena and Rachel, brave, hands clenched into fists. “Even if you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“You told me,” Sarah says, and she swallows, and her voice cracks too much, and she keeps talking, and her voice – it’s cracking – it’s cracking too much – why won’t she—

“You said you’d figure it out,” Sarah says. “Not that you’d – leave, you’d get swallowed up by bloody – Model UN and shite. You know how fast you run after class, Rachel? You think I don’t know what running looks like?”

“I did what was necessary.”

“No,” Helena says. “You did what was easy. For you.”

Rachel takes another step backwards. Maybe at the top of the stairs here there will be the bedroom of a teenage girl who’s happy and Rachel can run up the stairs and lock the door and become her. That girl. Rachel could be a cuckoo here, a terrible rot; she’d be content with it.

“Staying,” she says, “would have been easy. That’s just inertia.” She runs again – her feet walk, but she’s running. She climbs the stairs. _That’s just inertia_ , god, what a stupid thing to say. But it would have been easy. Staying. She should have explained that, how proud she has been of her own self-control, how focused she has been on not slipping into the ease of being theirs.

She’s dizzy with it, all the infinite ways she’s being stupid. Gloved fingers on the staircase rail: stupid. Helena and Sarah downstairs, clenched fists: stupid. Everything she does is stupid. When she isn’t theirs, that’s a mistake. When she is wholly theirs, that’s a mistake. She swings back and forth between the two states of being and it’s all terrible. She wants them to leave her forever and also she wants them to pin her to the ground and hold her down until she screams all of her sharp parts free.

At the top of the stairs there is only one bedroom. Master. There are no photos, but there is a cat in the middle of the bed; it opens its eyes lazily and watches Rachel approach it. She sits down on the bed and lets it sniff her fingers. Slowly, patiently, she coaxes it into letting her scratch its chin. It purrs.

“It’s gonna bite your hand off,” Sarah says.

Rachel lifts a shoulder and lets it fall again. The bed dips as Sarah sits down next to her. The cat has started rubbing its face against Rachel’s hand, although its eyes are still warily focused on Sarah.

“Give up,” Rachel says.

“No. Don’t be a twat.”

Rachel exhales through her nose, small and soft. “No,” she says. “If I give that up I’ll have no identity left.”

“Bullshit,” Sarah says. “There’s more to you than that. You like cloudy days, and heights, and aquariums. You can stop being such a phenomenal twat and still like that shit, Rachel.”

She reaches around Rachel to roughly knuckle the top of the cat’s head and the cat – unsurprisingly – hisses and lashes out a paw. Sarah doesn’t pull her hand back in time; a spot of blood lands on the comforter. “Shite,” she says with a faint shock of surprise. She rubs the stain with her hand and it fades but lingers.

“You should find a plaster,” Rachel says.

Sarah huffs. “One for the book,” she says. “Never stolen a plaster before.” She heaves herself off the bed, watches the cat lash its tail back and forth and watch Rachel’s hand with a wariness it hadn’t had before.

“We’re not gonna leave without you,” Sarah says, stopping in the door and turning back around. “So you know.” And then she leaves, back into the main house; Rachel hears the sound of her footsteps thumping down the stairs, tells herself that Sarah is something she can believe in.

* * *

But it’s Christmas Eve, now, and Rachel’s cell phone is downstairs, and she is putting on her makeup in the empty cave of her bedroom. With stockinged feet pressed to the floor, she can feel the vibration of string music from downstairs. _It isn’t too late to leave the party_ , she thinks, only it is. It’s too late to leave. She fastens a necklace around her throat, one that dangles into the space between her breasts. Her dress is short and black and tight. Her stockings have a line all the way up the back. Rachel keeps remembering, over and over, that she will be the youngest guest at this party – a difference of about forty years.

She puts down the lipstick. “Well,” she tells herself in the mirror, and she goes down the stairs.

The caterers haven’t finished setting up, and so Rachel can move like a ghost through the place where the party will be. Without her shoes her feet are silent and precise on the ground. The music plays. She eyes with disgust an ice sculpture shaped like a swan. As she watches it, a drop of water melts from its eye; it unfurls itself down the slope of the bird’s neck, dripping down onto the table. If they’d asked her, she would have told them that an ice sculpture was an idiotic idea – with the amount of people in this house? Really?

But they wouldn’t have listened to her.

Across the house, her mother is snapping at a caterer. Rachel’s father is in the open living room, frowning absentmindedly at a bookshelf. His tie, around his neck, is still undone; Rachel loves him anyways. That is the default way of loving her father: anyways. She loves him despite. She loves the familiar smell of his aftershave, the scrape of stubble on his chin that her mother hasn’t managed to persuade him to shave.

She puts her fingertips against his arm and he jolts, says “Rachel” with the sort of delighted surprise he always uses to say her name – like he forgets that he made a daughter until she enters his vision again.

She grabs the ends of his tie. “Mother won’t be pleased with you,” she murmurs as she ties the knot.

“You look lovely,” he says. “Our Rachel. Alan Nealon will be coming tonight. Do you remember Alan? He was your physician when you were small.”

“I saw the guest list,” Rachel says. “It’s a big evening, isn’t it.”

“Oh, hardly,” says Rachel’s father. “A few drinks with coworkers. We’ll all see what’s what.”

“I know.”

“You do? You do.” He reaches out and pats her arm, briskly. “Oh, Rachel,” he says. “Every year you amaze us more and more.”

 _I try,_ Rachel thinks, and she tugs the edges of the tie straight and drops her hand. Head tilt left, head tilt right. No, it’s perfect. Her father lowers his chin obediently and blinks at her through the lenses of his glasses.

“I’m sorry about all that muck back in – oh, a few months ago,” he says, scrubbing at his hair until it stands up.

It hasn’t been a few months. “I understand,” Rachel says. “You know what’s best.”

“That’s what we want,” he says. “What’s best. You’re our future, you know.”

Sometimes she feels two feet tall.

“They’ll be arriving soon,” she says. “Fix your hair.” Then she pivots and pulls herself back up the stairs, to her room, to the patient army of high-heeled shoes stacked in neat rows in her closet. She won’t feel two feet tall. She’ll be skyscraper-high, big enough to look down on them. Someday that will be true; she might as well start practicing.

Downstairs, guests start to arrive. She has been working so hard to forget it, but now Rachel remembers: she had been invited somewhere else. She had been wanted somewhere else. She can imagine the shape of that living room in the dark, the warm glow of Christmas lights. For one moment she digs her fingernail into her thumb; then she puts that into its box with all the other unpacked boxes and goes down the stairs.

The party is the same party. It is always the same party. Scientists and businessmen, power-hungry women with tight faces and sharp teeth; old men with eyes like licking tongues, geniuses who are never able to find which door leads to the bathroom. She knows them, even if she doesn’t know them. She makes conversation. She lets them touch her arm and her hand and the small of her back. The men all – to a one – compliment her necklace. The women watch the smooth skin of her hands with something like starvation.

It goes on for ages.

Yes, I’m sixteen now. Thank you, I _have_ been told I look mature for my age. Oh, I’m sure they’re busy, you know how they are. Yes. I’m currently torn between business and the hard sciences – of course I’m good at both – yes, I _am_ my parents’ daughter, would you like something to drink?

She flings herself across the room, back and forth, a one-sided siege. Yes, I _am_ my parents’ daughter – yes, I _am_ my parents’ daughter – yes, please do introduce me – no, I’m not dating – of course I remember you – it’s an antique – here, take a closer look—

Yes, I _am_ my parents’ daughter—

You’re looking handsome yourself, I’m flattered, please introduce us, yes if you’d like to feel the fabric, yes I am mature for my age, it is a beautiful necklace, you’re too kind, yes I _am_ my parents’—

Of course thank you I haven’t decided but I’m applying to as many as yes that is certainly on my list you’re right how could I know I’ll have to look into it no I haven’t read it yes please introduce us thank you you’re too kind you flatter me no I haven’t met your wife oh divorce that’s sad thank you I moisturize if you’d like to touch if you’d like to look yes I am my parents’ daughter sixteen I’m sixteen the boys are coming after me in droves you know my father you’re too kind sixteen sixteen sixteen thank you sixteen charming sixteen hilarious sixteen beautiful yourself thank you yes I am my parents’ daughter yes I am yes I am yes I—

 

She locks herself in the bathroom.

 

 

It shouldn’t be too long until someone knocks at the door, and so Rachel makes her way straight to the window and opens it an inch so she can breathe. She just wants to breathe. She wishes they’d stop touching her. Hands at the small of her back. Of course she has already met everyone here; of course she knows their names; she doesn’t need anyone showing her around her own – damn – house. But they want to touch her. They want her because she is so small and young and fragile. She’s going to grow up to be something, someday, but right now she isn’t that and so she’s touchable. Imagine if the Duncans’ daughter grows up with our fingerprints all _over_ her. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Someone is knocking at the door. The noise of the party swells back around her; it never left, but she has managed to forget about it for what must have been thirty seconds. Rachel’s breaths are fast and shallow in her chest. “Hello?” says someone outside. “ _Hello?_ I haven’t all night, you know.”

Deliberately, Rachel flushes the toilet. She looks at her hot red face in the mirror. It’s boiling in here. Outside, the swan has already melted. If they had listened to her they would have known. That it would melt. They would have known.

She washes her hands mechanically in the sink and then opens the door, blows past the person waiting, blows through the party like a hot dry wind, opens the hall closet and grabs her backpack and is outside and, oh, she’s not wearing a coat, it’s so cold, she’s going to freeze. She keeps walking away from the house. Already she is starting to shake. Rachel fumbles her phone out of the front pocket of her backpack and dials a number, holds it to her ear.

“Merry Christmas,” says a voice on the other end.

“I need you to come get me,” she says.

Silence. Then: “Okay.”

* * *

“Why aren’t you wearing a jacket,” Helena says. Rachel stops walking, feels the cold press itself against her hips and neck and legs.

“I was in a hurry,” she says. “Why are you on a motorcycle.”

“I borrowed it,” Helena says from the seat of the motorcycle. Her hair is smashed under a helmet; the pale yellow of it is the brightest thing in the dark. Rachel on the curb feels obscured, invisible. “Is Tony’s. Don’t crash, or he will be upset.”

“I’m not driving it,” Rachel says, “and thank you.”

“Of course,” Helena says. She watches Rachel, silent, from the street. The motorcycle growls to itself as it idles. “Take a helmet,” she says.

Rachel takes a helmet. She gets on the back of the motorcycle. Helena is magnificently, unbelievably warm. She starts the motorcycle and they roar through the abandoned streets of Rachel’s neighborhood; Rachel puts her head against Helena’s back, closes her eyes. From somewhere distant, carols echo. The straps of her backpack dig into the soft skin between her shoulders and her breasts. _Ow_ , she thinks. Ow.

Siobhan’s house is decorated with strings of Christmas lights; Rachel watches them to try and see if she can tell who put up which string. A tangled ball of lights hung defiantly over the front door is likely Sarah’s. The rest is a mystery.

Helena stops the bike. It ticks to itself as it cools down; neither of them move, Rachel still pressed too close to Helena in the dark. She should say that she’s sorry. There are so many things that she’s sorry for that she doesn’t know where to start. At the beginning, maybe: I’m sorry I was born, I didn’t mean to hurt you.

She chokes down a breath and swings her numb legs off the bike. “I didn’t know you could drive a motorcycle,” she offers.

“I am learning,” Helena says. “Sarah says someday she is going to leave and when she does leave I want to be able to ride a motorcycle.” She hops off the motorbike, unclips her helmet. Her hair bounces back to life around her face and she shakes her head like a dog so it frizzes into a halo. Rachel unclips her helmet and passes it off to Helena.

“To go with her?” Rachel says. “Or to bring her home?”

For a moment they are looking at each other – and then Helena takes the helmet. She stows their helmets on the bike. She shoves her hands into the pockets of her parka. “Come,” she says. “You are shaking, from cold.” She scuffs her feet on the welcome mat, mechanical, and then lets herself inside. When she sheds her parka at the door, Rachel can see that she is wearing a jumper that looks hand-knitted. Rachel hangs her backpack on another hook so she doesn’t have to turn around.

A dark green blanket nudges her in the arm. Helena is on the other end of it, face flat. Rachel takes the blanket and drapes it over her shoulders and – god – her fingers, the feeling in her fingers. She toes off her shoes and then nudges the end of a heel with her toes to line them up perfectly.

“There you are,” calls a voice from the other room. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s got you tearing out of this house in the middle of the night like – oh, Rachel. Been a minute, hasn’t it?”

“Hello, Siobhan,” Rachel says. Her voice is quiet. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she adds through the shiver-shaking of her mouth and the numbness of her tongue.

Siobhan blinks at her, sharp and baffled. She looks cinnamon and firelight warm. Her hair is over her shoulders. Rachel’s mother never wears her hair loose, which is a horrible thing to think about right now. Also Rachel’s mother wouldn’t wear a faded sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up, and Rachel is finished thinking about her mother.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Siobhan says. “You were invited.” She turns to Helena. “Did you not tell her?”

“I told,” Helena says, and prowls off into the living room. Rachel pulls the blanket tighter and fights the continuous, exhausting urge to rest her head on Siobhan’s shoulder and tell her everything. Siobhan is not Rachel’s mother. Rachel has a mother, who has probably noticed by now that Rachel is gone. She really is done thinking about her – her mother – it’s just that she wanted to remember, that by now her mother has realized that Rachel isn’t there. She’s noticed. She’s paying attention.

“No coat?” Siobhan says.

Rachel shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to show up empty-handed,” she says. “I didn’t – I wouldn’t, I.” She laughs. “I’m freezing and my manners are gone. Is there any way I can help?”

“You can help by sitting down and warming up,” Siobhan says. “I’ll make tea.” She leaves purposefully for the kitchen. It’s stupid that this means something. It’s so incredibly stupid. Rachel could follow Siobhan into the kitchen, but that would be hiding; it wouldn’t take Siobhan long to realize that. And then she would be disappointed in Rachel, which Rachel absolutely could not bear.

She clings to the blanket like there’s security in it and goes into the living room. The couch has been shifted into the corner by the fireplace so that there’s room for a Christmas tree; Helena and Sarah are piled onto the couch, Helena holding something on a stick over the fire. Sarah’s mouth closes on the last syllable of a word as Rachel walks into the room.

“Rachel,” Sarah says. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rachel says, echoing the word with a bit of a bite. She takes Siobhan’s armchair and curls up and shivers. The fire licks at the edge of her vision, mercifully apathetic to her current state of mind.

“You’re gonna burn it,” Sarah says, soft.

“I like it burned,” Helena says.

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do.”

 _I shouldn’t have come_ , Rachel thinks, but Sarah can’t break into her own house so saying it is pointless. The dress is heinously uncomfortable, digging claws into the skin of her thighs and grabbing at her ribcage with bruising hands. She doesn’t have any other clothing – and, more than that, she can’t bear to shed any skins here. Not around the twins, she can’t do it.

Not anymore.

“How was the party,” Sarah says. Rachel doesn’t look at her, watches Helena’s marshmallow bubble and swell and burn. A blister pops.

“Awful,” she says. “The ice sculpture melted.”

“The _ice sculpture_.”

Helena doesn’t say anything. The marshmallow melts and drips, charred, into the grate. The fire hisses and eats it. Helena doesn’t like her marshmallows burned; Rachel doesn’t know why she’s doing this to herself.

“It was shaped like a swan,” she says helplessly, and she closes her eyes. She isn’t going to cry. There isn’t anything to cry about. If her parents notice that she’s going they are going to hate her again. They thought she was better than this. She thought she was better than this. Rachel’s mother retyed the tie on Rachel’s father’s neck, partway through the party, and Rachel was alone and she had nothing.

“She asleep?” Siobhan’s voice.

“Dunno.” Sarah.

“Helena, love, your marshmallow’s burning up.”

“Sorry.” Helena’s voice, small and flat and bubbling with blisters.

Siobhan sighs. Her weight settles on the couch. Rachel can feel her eyelashes fluttering but she keeps them closed, in case one of them says something she can understand. Instead she hears the sounds of weight shifting, something dropping to the floor, a set of footsteps taking the stairs, a door closing with a soft click.

“Merry Christmas,” Sarah says.

“I do wish one of you would tell me what’s going on,” Siobhan says. “Just once.”

Silence.

“It’s not my shit to tell,” Sarah says after a moment. “It’s theirs, and they’re both bloody impossible.” She sighs. Rachel is impossible. Helena isn’t impossible, she’s just – to Rachel’s mind – incomprehensible. There’s a difference.

“Friendships can be difficult,” Siobhan says. “Breaking them is easier, but mending them is easier than that. They’ll be alright.”

Sarah sighs. “I’m gonna punch her mum.”

“ _Do_ not punch anyone’s mother, Sarah.”

Sarah mutters something; all Rachel catches is a few curse words.

“Sarah.”

Sarah makes a frustrated shriek of a sound in the pit of her throat and thumps off the couch, wanders away into the house. Rachel waits until the footsteps fade and then – with effort – opens her eyes. Siobhan is watching her steadily from the couch.

“Helena isn’t impossible,” Rachel says.

“I’m sure she’d say the same about you.”

Rachel exhales softly through her nose. “What time is it?”

“A little past eight.”

“Alright,” Rachel says, and – bones creaking – unwraps herself from the blanket. She can feel Siobhan’s eyes noticing the dress and the necklace and the stockings with the line up the back; the noticing is different than all the other noticings, though. She isn’t bothered by it.

“Thank you for the tea,” she says, even though she hasn’t touched it. Siobhan raises her eyebrows at her in a way that says she knows, but won’t call Rachel on it.

Her backpack is still hanging on its hook by the door. Rachel is partway through unzipping one of the pockets when Sarah appears behind her, leaning against a wall, arms folded. “Already,” she says.

“I’m not leaving yet.”

“Then what are you doing.”

There: scarf. It sits in her hand small like a bird, dark grey and almost unbearably soft to the touch. So small. Small enough that she could fold it into the pocket of her jacket and carry it with her, beating against the palm of her hand like a heart.

She pulls it out and offers it to Sarah. “I didn’t have time to wrap it,” she says quietly. “And there may still be cat hair on it.”

“You have a cat?”

“No.”

It takes Sarah a moment and then she blinks and says, in a voice like she’s been socked in the stomach: “Oh.” She takes the scarf; she turns it over and over in her hands.

“You don’t have a scarf.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says shakily, “guess not.” She doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. Eventually she folds it flat and shoves it into the pocket of her jeans with a small, sad wince – like she’s embarrassed to do that to it.

“You don’t have to worry about damaging it,” Rachel says. “It didn’t cost me anything.”

“You didn’t pay for it,” Sarah says. “There’s a difference.”

She bounces her hip against the wall. “Here, come on,” she says abruptly. “Mine’s upstairs. Didn’t know if you were coming, putting it under the tree felt sad as shit. If you didn’t come I was gonna break into your locker ‘n leave it there, so.” She takes the stairs two at a time; Rachel follows more sedately. At the top of the stairs Helena’s door is closed and Sarah’s is open. Inside the room is exactly the same – so much so that Rachel’s heart jabs itself into her chest with sharp nostalgia. Writing on the wall. Underneath the windowsill: a small, pointed RD that no one has crossed out.

The room is also a mess. Rachel steps over clothing and sits down on Sarah’s unmade bed. “Sorry,” Sarah mutters, rummaging through some disaster pile or another.

“It’s fine.” Rachel tilts her head up to look at the ceiling, the lines of constellations drawn in permanent marker. She can imagine Sarah – eight years old,nine maybe – standing on a precarious heap of chairs and suitcases to start drawing stars on the ceiling. _I’m staying. I’m staying here, fuck you, you can’t make me leave._ Sagittarius and Orion. She wonders if Sarah did it on purpose; she wonders how much Sarah knows herself.

“Here,” Sarah says, and a CD in a thin plastic case drops into Rachel’s lap. The CD and case are both unmarked. Sarah is standing over her – jumper with the sleeves pushed up, dark jeans, thick grey socks. Rachel looks back down at the case, because it seems safer.

“Figured your parents still have a CD player,” Sarah says. “Or you do. Your kind of shit. Ancient history or whatever.” She’s rocking back and forth on her feet.

“We don’t,” Rachel says. She turns the CD over and over in her hands to watch the different ways the disc catches the light.

“You don’t?” Sarah says weakly. Rachel shakes her head and Sarah throws herself onto the bed behind Rachel. “Of course,” she says, and more quietly: “of _course_.”

“Will you tell me what’s on it.”

“No.”

Rachel tilts her head to the side to watch Sarah watch the ceiling. Sarah’s jaw is set; her foot is hopping on the floor. She looks consumed in her own self-loathing, and Rachel wishes it was a fire that she could put out. She looks back at the disc.

“Sarah?” she says.

“What.”

“Thank you.”

Awful, fragile silence. “Yeah,” Sarah says. “You’re welcome. Best present you ever got, you can’t even play it. You’re – you’re really welcome, Rachel.” She flips herself off the bed and leaves the room, goes jumping back down the stairs. Rachel swallows and presses the jewel case flat between her palms. She really does like it. Sarah must have put herself on this CD, and Rachel can’t reach it or hear it or touch it; it’s safer that way, she can’t ruin it. The perfect gift.

She pads down the stairs after Sarah, puts the CD in her backpack and brings her backpack back upstairs. Quietly, she knocks on the other door. She has enough time to think that she has to go back downstairs and leave – and then Helena opens it. She doesn’t say anything.

“Are you going to let me in?” Rachel says. The words come out too heavy and soft with meaning, like summerfruit.

Helena opens the door; once Rachel has walked in, she closes it again. She sits on the bed. The weight of the last time they were both in Helena’s bedroom is sick and glittering in the air between them.

Rachel sits down on Helena’s bed. “Sarah told me,” she says, “that she couldn’t bear to give me a present to my face. She was going to leave it in my locker. We’re the same animal, because that’s what I was going to do to you.”

The air is silent except for the sound of Rachel rummaging through her backpack. She finds the envelope, pulls it out, slaps it onto the bed. Helena reaches for it and Rachel says: “Don’t.

“Don’t,” she repeats, more softly. “I was a coward. I am a coward. You knew this about me.” She sucks in a breath. “I wrote a letter. It was stupid. I’m stupid. You deserve more than that. I—”

In the envelope is the letter – two pages, she’d spent all those days narrowing it to two pages. The third page isn’t a letter. She pulls that out of the envelope and puts it on the bed. “I wanted to give you a piece of myself but I don’t have anything to give. There isn’t anything.”

“That’s not true.”

“In England,” Rachel says, “I had piano lessons. I hated them. I did them anyways, because I didn’t know what else to do. My parents stopped them when we came here, I don’t know why. Anyways. This is for you.”

Helena reaches out and takes the sheet music, holds it in her hands like the skeleton of a bird: fragile and not as hidden as it should be. “I don’t know what this means,” she says. “What are the dots.”

“Notes,” Rachel says. “I know—” she looks down at her hands, watches her nails dig into her fingers again. Sucks in a breath. “There’s a piano downstairs, if you wanted—”

“No,” Helena says. She ducks around the bed and finds a laptop, fiddles with it for a bit and then turns it to Rachel. On the screen is the graphic of a piano; behind it, tracks. Music software. Each letter mapped to a key. Rachel presses a finger to the F key and a tinny note optimistically struggles out of the computer’s speakers. She plays, slow and stilted, the first bar of “Moonlight Sonata.” Terrible.

Helena curls up on her side on the bed, hair falling over her face. “Okay,” she says.

Rachel bites the inside of her lip and plays.

It’s been a long time since piano lessons – and those were in an enormous house, the hollow ribcage-ticking of the metronome and a piano teacher who would stop her if her fingers weren’t perfectly curved. The piano was a Steinway. Rachel’s posture was immaculate; she won trophies for her performances, even if everyone always said they lacked feeling.

Now she is sitting, barefoot and awkward in her tight party dress, on Helena’s bed. Each note from the synthetic keyboard lasts a second or so before she realizes that awkwardly stretching her pinky finger to the Tab button draws notes out. Then they hang in the air, plastic and useless, for a few seconds more.

In her head, it had been the Steinway. In her head she sat at the Steinway and played this and Helena said _hm, silly,_ and dragged her outside and down the block to the park she never once was able to play in. They sat on the swings. The song is about that, because Rachel is inherently selfish; mostly it is about Helena. Right hand on C5, left hand stretched down low enough that the notes get sour. On the electronic keyboard they all flatten into the same octave, the same sound. Maybe that’s kinder. Maybe it is kinder to give Helena back a flattened version of herself, but that doesn’t mean Rachel wants it. She didn’t want it like this.

She plays the whole thing anyways, as best she’s able. She keeps having to stop because things don’t match up, or because she optimistically wrote a more difficult collection of notes than she could actually manage. She struggles through and then it’s over. The notes don’t even linger long enough for her to catch her breath – they are silicone and they are gone.

“I wanted you to be you,” Helena says without moving or lifting her head. “When I came here I was scared and I was all the things I had had to be to be the person who could be the person that is me. Mostly I was scared. But when I had space to learn about being a person I learned about her, Helena. Who she was and what she wanted and who she loved and who she could be. I thought if you had space, and you were with us, you could learn that. But then you were just angry at the person that you were. Because you were also the other person that you were. And you were trying to be another person but I don’t know if she was you.”

“I don’t understand,” Rachel says.

“I do not also,” Helena says, and rolls onto her back. “English is not my first language. Very hard. I am struggles.” She sounds wry and self-deprecating. “Manyways. What did you say in the letter.”

“That,” Rachel says. “I was sorry, which you knew. That I wanted to be your friend but I was terrible at it, and I keep being terrible at it, and I don’t know how to stop being terrible at it, but if you just tell me what to do I’ll—”

Helena makes a fart noise with her mouth. Anger throttles Rachel and strokes her arms with hot hands and makes a monster of her and then it’s gone.

“You see,” Helena says. “That’s not you. That is the you that you think you should be for me, but that is silly, because I don’t like her. I like you. Even though sometimes you are stupid.” She considers. “Most of the time. Many times. Like when you said you would stay and then you left and ran away and tried to be the you that you think you should be for your parents. That was stupid. Neither of those are you. That’s what I think, now that I think. You are like song on bad computer piano. All squashed into the wrong space.”

She turns and blinks at Rachel. “See?”

“So what do I do.”

“Stop asking me what you should do. That is what you do. Problem is that you want to be very very good at being daughter Rachel, but also you have to be the best at friend Rachel. And both? No. So maybe stop being perfect at both of these things. Be bad at them sometimes. Try the parts that make you happy. Keep those.

“It was my fault,” she says, after a little while, “for saying that I wanted you to stay. That was bad.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Rachel says. She closes the laptop and lies down on the bed, curls up to face Helena. “You were honest. At least one of us could be. I’m glad—” She falters. “I’m sorry—”

“I will smack you.”

“I am,” Rachel says. “That you trusted me, and I left you. I was terrified. I thought that if I – buried my head in it, I would – I don’t know. Go back to what I was. Not want anything. Turn into an automaton. I was running from the thought that my life wasn’t enough without you in it. Stupid.”

Helena lets out a crumpled breath through her nose that sounds like she’s trying not to laugh. “How many,” she says, as her voice fills itself with smothered hysteria. “How many clubs did you join.”

“Five,” Rachel says. “I went through every club until I found ones that met on separate weekdays. I didn’t want to leave my lunches open. I joined—” The mood is catching, and she had to concentrate to get the sentence out through her own almost-laughter. “I joined Dungeons and Dragons, because it was the only club that met at lunch on Thursdays—”

Helena bursts into laughter. “I told you I was a coward!” Rachel says. “Do you not know what that means!”

“English!” Helena says dramatically, throwing her hands into the air above her bed, and that strikes Rachel as so funny that she loses her mind and starts laughing. They’re both laughing. Eventually the sounds stop being laughter and start being something else, and Rachel’s vision blurs, but that’s fine and she can deny it later. She’s laughing. That’s all. It was funny – she doesn’t know why it was funny, but it was funny.

After a while they both stop. Helena rubs her eyes with her fists, like a child. Rachel runs a finger under the edge of her eye and finds – to her relief – that her mascara hasn’t smeared. “Did you know I actually like it,” she says. “And that they don’t play Dungeons and Dragons.”

Helena starts laughing again, helplessly. “What!” she says. “Why! What do you do then!”

“Other games,” Rachel says. “God help me, I don’t want to quit. Every time I beat Scott in a strategy board game he makes a face like I’ve murdered his favorite dog.”

“See!” Helena says. “There you go. That is you. Sorry, Rachel, but that is who you are.”

“Apology accepted,” Rachel says faintly. She covers her face briefly and then sits up. Helena watches her with the canny gaze of a scavenger-animal. “So,” she says.

“So what.”

“That was my question,” Rachel says. “There was a ‘now’ in the middle, I think.”

“So now the what,” Helena says, “is that we go downstairs and you play me the song on the piano. And then if you want to stay you stay, and if you want to go back to the other party you go, and we are friends, and I can return to making face at you every time Donnie says Alison’s name. Okay?”

Rachel nods, looks away. “Thank you,” she says.

“Eugh,” Helena says. “None of these thank yous. Then we will sit here and thank for long time, and I will thank you for wanting to come back and knowing that you were hurting me by not doing this, and you will thank me for understanding, and I will thank you for the song, and you will thank me for – euh. No.” She sits up and drums her feet on the ground. “Oh,” she says. “No, one more thank you. I think.” She stands up and goes to her closet, rummages around in it for a while. Rachel goes back to looking around the room and is thus surprised when something large smacks her in the face before falling to the floor.

“Ouch,” she says, after a moment has passed.

Helena stares at her. “You are like idiot baby,” she says. “You _catch_.”

Rachel stares back at her and then looks down to the floor. The thing that Helena threw at her is a plush stuffed shark, almost as long as her arm and almost as wide as her torso. Its mouth is open. Its teeth are made of stiff white felt. It’s a Great White. Rachel picks it up and examines it, the black beads of its eyes reflecting a small warped version of her back to herself.

“I bought it,” Helena says. “With monies.” She tilts her head to the side and watches Rachel, face soft with an emotion Rachel won’t put a name to. “Don’t name it Rachel,” she says.

“I won’t,” Rachel says. She swallows down the jagged thing in her throat. “Thank you.”

“There you go,” Helena says. “Very good. Now we are done with the thank yous, yes?”

Rachel nods. She tugs her backpack over and puts the shark into it – and after a moment, shoves the letter into her backpack too so she can rip it up later.

“I want to see the song,” Helena says. “Will you show it to me.”

“It’s been months since I’ve played an actual piano.”

Helena flashes her teeth in something too animal to be a grin. “Siobhan tried to be teaching Sarah. I know how bad piano sounds. Don’t worry.” She opens the door and heads downstairs. Rachel grabs the sheet music and follows her.

On the way down the stairs she passes Sarah going up, holding a pile of linens and radiating the put-upon air of someone who has been asked to do something by a parent. She stops on the stairs and watches Rachel as Rachel passes. “You good?” she says warily.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “Helena says you’re excellent at piano, would you like to join in?”

Sarah blanches and absconds. Rachel exhales through her nose and finishes her way down the staircase; Helena is already sitting on the piano bench, playing scattered notes from the song that Rachel had already played. Rachel sits down next to her on the bench and pretends she can’t see Siobhan on the couch out of the corner of her eye.

“This is horribly out of tune,” she says.

“Oh no,” Helena says with absolutely no convincing feeling.

She plays a practice scale. Then she settles her fingers, watches them fall into their learned familiar curves. After a second Helena’s head hits her shoulder; it lifts again, but it was there. Rachel plays.

* * *

The crowd has lightened but not cleared by the time Rachel gets back to the party; she makes her way through to the staircase with a carefully-wielded blend of _Christmas Eve service at the homeless shelter_ and _I’m horribly exhausted_ and _I do so hate to miss the party but_ — until she is upstairs in her room. Her boxes loom in the corner like exhausted ghosts. Tomorrow. She’ll unpack them tomorrow. Helena had said _come build snow peoples on Christmas_ and Rachel had said, honestly, _I don’t know if I can_. And that had been alright, because it was true.

Tomorrow, then.

For now she slithers out of the casing of her dress, discards the necklace, takes off the makeup and peels off the stockings. She washes her face, she brushes her teeth. She unzips her backpack and puts the shark on the bed – she is embarrassed about it for one moment before deciding that’s a waste of her time.

Rachel goes to pull the letter out of her backpack and finds, on top of it, a portable CD player wrapped in the cord from a pair of headphones. There’s a note attached, handwriting familiar from someone else’s walls.

_This is S’, don’t wreck it. Not part of the present. Merry Christmas. SM_

Rachel unwraps the cord. She puts the CD into the player. She turns off the light, gets into bed, fits the headphones into her ear and presses the play button.

The sound of the music envelops her, cocoons her, swallows her up. Rachel isn’t Rachel anymore; she isn’t this thing that keeps letting people down, she’s just a girl floating in the heartbeat thrum of guitars and bass. She presses her fingers to her wrist and feels the comfort of her own heart pumping blood.

Eventually she falls asleep. The music keeps on going, on and on until it stops.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is obviously from Monkey Tree by Mother Mother. My plan is to get Sarah's playlist online on Christmas Day proper, so keep an eye out for it!
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed!


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